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Thread: Please tell me how to pronounce "undoes".

  1. #1
    ohmyrichard is offline Member
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    Default Please tell me how to pronounce "undoes".

    Dear teachers,
    Today I came across the word of “undoes” several times in my reading and it really got me embarrassed about how to pronounce it. Just now I went to some online pronunciation dictionaries and some online general purpose dictionaries to look it up but most of them told me how to read “undo”, “undid”, “undone” and “undoing”, whose pronunciations I am already clear about. And two dictionaries did tell me how to pronounce it, but, unfortunately, the pronunciations they gave are different – one being /ʌn'du:z/ and the other being /ʌn'dʌz/. Please tell me, which one is its correct pronunciation, /ʌn'du:z/ or /ʌn'dʌz/?
    Thanks a lot.
    Richard
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    5jj
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    Default Re: Please tell me how to pronounce "undoes".

    /ʌn'dʌz/ is correct and natural in BrE.
    Context is important. Please provide enough for us to be able to deal effectively with your question.
    Your thread title should include all or part of the word/phrase being discussed.
    If you just want to know the meaning of a word, try OneLook Dictionary Search first.


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    Default Re: Please tell me how to pronounce "undoes".

    Were you having problems with the pronunciation of "does" before you came across "undoes"?
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    Remember - correct capitalisation, punctuation and spacing make posts much easier to read.

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    ohmyrichard is offline Member
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    Default Re: Please tell me how to pronounce "undoes".

    Quote Originally Posted by emsr2d2 View Post
    Were you having problems with the pronunciation of "does" before you came across "undoes"?
    No. But English is a tricky language and I cannot and dare not always make inferences all on my own.
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    ohmyrichard is offline Member
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    Default Re: Please tell me how to pronounce "undoes".

    Quote Originally Posted by 5jj View Post
    /ʌn'dʌz/ is correct and natural in BrE.
    Thanks a lot, 5jj.
    I will have one of the sentences I came across yesterday pasted below:
    When language interacts with society, an utterance as banal as "I'm sorry" undoes logical distinctions as thoroughly as a Francis Ponge poem.

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    Rover_KE is offline Moderator
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    Default Re: Please tell me how to pronounce "undoes".

    For the benefit of those who don't use IPA, undoes rhymes with bun-fuzz.

    Rover
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    Esgaleth is online now VIP Member
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    Default Re: Please tell me how to pronounce "undoes".

    Quote Originally Posted by ohmyrichard View Post
    Just now I went to some online pronunciation dictionaries and some online general purpose dictionaries to look it up but most of them told me how to read “undo”, “undid”, “undone” and “undoing”, whose pronunciations I am already clear about.
    Interestingly, OALD easily provides this information.

    undo - Definition and pronunciation | Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary at OxfordLearnersDictionaries.com
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    ohmyrichard is offline Member
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    Default Re: Please tell me how to pronounce "undoes".

    Quote Originally Posted by Esgaleth View Post
    Thanks for reminding me of this great place to go. As there are numerous online dictionaries available, I simply forgot to visit it. I use the physical version of OALD a lot, but this time I just forgot to look up "undoes" in it. Just now I went to my physical version of OALD and found that it does tell us to pronounce "undoes" /ʌn'dʌz/ on p. 1925 (What I use is Oxford Advanced Learner's English-Chinese Dictionary, 6th Edition).

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